Archive for get out the vote

Whether you enjoy the young Steve Kornacki or not, he throws a great weekend roundtable on UP. This holiday weekend brought some extra humor in, including someone we are all likely fans of, co-creator of The Daily Show and founder of Lady Parts Justice, Lizz Winstead.

Clinton-mania is starting to rev it's engines on both sides of the aisle, and it won't be long before the really large mega-phones come out on all fronts. Whether you tolerate Hillary or not, insert your reaction here, she and the Nineties are an inevitable topic of conversation from now until The HRC Announce or Denounce and Bow Out Date.

If you are of a certain age, this is a great look back and offers a glimpse of what could be again - a confident country that doesn't have it's ass being wagged by the ubiquitous, lunatic fringe Tea Party. Remember the era before the Idjits?!?

I never do this in posts ... but: Sigh.

UP took a truly amusing look at how we have or have not changed since the nineties, a table that included the afore-mentioned liberally hilarious Lizz Winstead.

Somehow Saturday Night Live came to mind on the heels of that discussion, so for an extra chortle, here's how those of us who were young adults in the Nineties had a laugh at Bubba, while we were comfortably ensconced in financial security and low unemployment. And had no Lipton Brigade phuquing things up.

"Get off your asses, fellas' … you've got an awfully lot of work to do," is as true now as it was then.

Get Out the Vote!! Who knows how many other Palins are lurking out there in the Wild?!!

Here's a quickie from Taegan that might cause a Progressives reading this post to wince, cry, and/or scream. It's not general election time, it's midterm election time, which does not always bode well for those of us on the left. The last headline we'd want to see would be, "Republicans win."

Unfortunately, some polls indicate that Republicans could gain more seats in the House and the Senate:

Other polls contradict those, but the good old corporate media keeps pushing the Loser Dems talking point, which is not helping.

Americans often favor Democratic policies more than they do Republican ones. Take Obamacare, for example. Once the health care law is broken down into its components, or even referred to as the Affordable Care Act (omitting the dreaded O Word), voters approve.

The political pendulum swings back and forth, with one party gaining power, then back to the other and so forth. However, when it comes to midterm elections, ones in which there is no presidential candidate, Democrats stay home. Remember how we got "shellacked" in 2010? Turnout was down, and we lost big time.

When turnout is up, Democrats tend to win, Republicans tend to lose.

And low turnout is what is being predicted for November. We better learn from our mistakes. We better kick some ass and get people registered. We better kick bigger ass and get out the vote. Because if we don't, bad things happen. Things that are very hard, or even impossible, to undo. Things like this:

The media is feeding feelings of growing panic among Democrats about losing the Senate in November, to which Dems are finally responding with one word: Turnout. This is a good thing. This is a very good and healthy thing, not just this November, but for every election ever. Without a huge voter turnout, Democrats lose, but when turnout efforts are successful, we generally win.

Here at TPC and on Twitter, I've been on a mini-campaign on thisvery thing. As Harry Reid so wisely framed it recently, Ridiculously Big Huge Enormous Gigantic Money (read: the Koch brothers) is a major obstacle that we must overcome. And that point underscores all kinds of issues that Democrats are passionate about, such as income inequality, the wealth gap, increasing the minimum wage, equal pay for women, and more. Targeting the Kochs gives voters something on which to laser focus and channel those passions.

And when voters are passionate, they make beelines (and long lines, and slow lines, thanks to GOP voter suppression laws) to the polls, and at this point, that is our best remedy. The Kochs may have tons of money, but we have tons of people. They have monetary power, we have people power... as long as we show up.

Faced with a strong prospect of losing control of the Senate in November, Democrats have begun a high-stakes effort to try to overcome one of their party's big weaknesses: voters who don't show up for midterm elections.

The party's Senate campaign committee plans to spend $60 million to boost turnout. That's nine times what it spent in the last midterm election, in 2010. [...]

"Disgruntled voters turn out at a somewhat higher rate than what I like to call the gruntled voters," said Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist.

However, there are a couple of catches:

But Democrats disagree on how populist an image to present. Some advocate a turn toward the left that they say will spur younger and minority voters to take interest in the election. Others argue for a more centrist tack, which might attract more moderate voters.

Mitch Stewart, who was the battleground-states director for Obama's 2012 campaign, said, "The conventional wisdom is that you don't start contacting voters until after Labor Day, [but that's] an outdated model." He couldn't be more correct about that. The time is now to knock on doors, make calls, email, you name it, in order to educate and inspire voters.

Why now? Because "motivating core parts of the Democratic voter base, particularly younger and less educated voters, is not easy." I can vouch for that. Trying to get young voters to pay attention to politics, especially during midterm elections, is, well, challenging. I've tried, and while their first impulse is to respond enthusiastically, they often lapse into:

Terry McAuliffe, like him or not, had the right idea when he won the Virginia gubernatorial race. He emphasized issues that Dems cared about, like Medicaid, marriage equality, and women's reproductive rights. He also targeted those who only voted occasionally.

But of course, that costs money, which brings us full circle to the Kochtopus. Again, though, they may have the money, but we have the numbers.

We can do this, but we must, MUST, register to vote, do everything we can to help others register and then get to the ballot box, and never, ever acquiesce to Big Corporate Money or the Corporate Media, both of which thrive on manipulating the message and pushing meaningless speculation.

Below are four words that are both meaningful and our most urgent message:

Republican minority outreach at it's finest. The tape is a little garbled, so the transcript is below. Via the Freep.

Transcript: What Weiser said to tea party forum

“If Obama loses Michigan, his paths to the White House reduce substantially. It’s very hard to see a path for him to the White House again. If we lose Virginia or Ohio, it saves us the election, and we will still win. That’s how important Michigan is.

Now I’m going to tell you my own theories in Michigan because it’s one of the reasons the RNC is sending as much money as they are here and why you will see some of our friends spending money here. Because I talk to them all the time. They call me because I was the chair here. I understand what’s going on.

I think there’s two things that make a huge difference. No.?1 is a very fundamental thing?…?Are there any Democrats in this room? (laughter) It’s a very fundamental thing. We have always had to overcome to win the governorship or the presidency a margin that used to be bigger, but in recent years has been about 350,000 votes out of Wayne County. And then if we could keep it even in Oakland County or win by a little bit, we’d have to overcome them in the rest of the state.

Well, let’s look at Wayne County. Two big groups. The first one’s Detroit. Population’s now shrunk under 700,000. Last presidential election it was probably about 800-850 (thousand). Less voters.

Secondly, no Coleman Young machine. No Kwame Kilpatrick machine. There is no Dave Bing machine. There’s no machine to go to the pool halls and the barbershops and put those people on buses and then bus them from precinct to precinct where they vote multiple times. And there’s no machine to get ’em to stop playing pool and drinking beer in the pool hall. And it does make a difference.

Now let’s go out-county. No McNamara machine. If there’s a Ficano machine, it hasn’t got a nickel. Or it’s under indictment — one or the other. (laughter) So I believe, and I’ve told these people this, that I don’t know how many votes less they’ll have, is it 60,000, 50,000, 80,000, there’s gonna be less of a margin to have to beat out of Wayne County then we’ve ever had before. That’s one?… (applause)

Obama has hired a lot of people to go help him get that vote out. But if you’re not from Detroit, the places where those pool halls and barbershops are, you’re not going to be going at 6:30 in November. Not without a side arm.”